Cambridge scientists have created a new 'scientific' quiz that sorts people into the four houses of Hogwarts - the magical school from J K Rowling's popular Harry Potter fantasy franchise.
In celebration of Harry Potter's 20th anniversary, researchers created a personality quiz that sorts participants into the four different houses of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry - Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw.
They used the results to determine the distribution of the houses across the 50 states of the US.
The quiz consisted of 21-questions from several well- established scientific personality surveys.
The 21 questions in the personality quiz measured traits that are commonly seen in the Harry Potter novels, like 'courage' and 'humility'.
The data was collected on the personalities of Harry Potter characters like Professor Severerus Snape, Luna Lovegood and others to denote the significant differences in the personality traits of characters from different Houses.
About 3,30,000 people participated in the quiz, the 'Time' reported.
To gather data on the personality traits of each House, researchers recruited hundreds of Harry Potter fans to answer the same 21 questions in this quiz on behalf of 20 different characters from the books - five from each House.
The responses showed clear differences between the personality traits our survey measures and the four Houses.
For example, Gryffindors showed an unsurprisingly high statistical correlation with courage, while Hufflepuffs tended to score very high on humility.
Researchers found that Hufflepuff is clearly associated with the Midwest, while there were more Slytherins in the South.
The highest chance of encountering a Gryffindor was in Hawaii, a Hufflepuff in North Dakota, a Ravenclaw in South Dakota and a Slytherin in West Virginia, researchers found.
Published 05 July 2017, 14:59 IST